Hello!

No joke!  No fakery. Good old correspondent and contributor Charlie Largent found this bit of prophetic wisdom hiding in the high-flying Kaiju Rodan, the Japanese version of course. We don’t NORMALLY look to Toho sci-fi for scientific accuracy, as pointed up by the admonition in Battle in Outer Space that the force of gravity cancels out under really low temperatures. In this case, we applaud the forward thinking of Toho’s screenwriters Takeshi Kimura and Takeo Murata.

The eco theme keys in with a related link steered my way by other sources. It’s NSFW (beware) but I have to say I endorse the anti- corporate sentiment. Somebody’s gotta say it, even if it’s just a canary squawk in a coal mine. It’s on YouTube, and carries the neutral title Chevron Ad. It plays like something that might not be around for long.

This one comes from the dependable CineSavant associate ‘B’.

In last Saturday’s review of Murder at the Vanities I invoked the Sam Coslow/Arthur Johnston song Cocktails for Two, specifically the famed Spike Jones novelty version, which was a favorite on the old Dr. Demento Radio Show.

We now follow up with an additional link: here is ‘B’s favorite rendition of the song as performed by Billy May, his orchestra and The Rhythmaires on Stan Freberg’s CBS radio show in 1957.

Now that’s novelty deconstruction!  More proof that Stan Freburg was decades ahead of the times.

Readers unfamiliar with the legendary cryptographer, spymaster and author Leo Marks or his relationship to the movies Cloudburst,  Carve Her Name with Pride and Peeping Tom will want to check out this new CrimeReads article by Scott Adlerberg — Marks’ crazy life story figures deeply in all three of those powerful pictures.

The article is The Complicated Life of Leo Marks, and the link steer comes via Joe Dante.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson